Saturday, February 23, 2013

Applications of Information Technology

Imaging Systems

we've learned that computers store data in the form of binary digits, 1s and 0s, and that these can be translated to and from the num­bers and words we use our computers to work on. But images? How would a com­puter handle them a data-s-and why?

Image Processing Applications

let's look at the ''why" first. Some businesses must Work with literally cons of paper on it daily basis . A giant company like American Express, for example, rakes in millions of credit card slips each day from merchant Sorts the data by account, and computes in­voices for Customers and payments for mer­chants. At one time, American Express physi­cally moved the actual charge slips from point to point during processing and re­turned them with the invoice to the cus­tomer . Now the slip is translated into an elec­tronic image, processed and stored as an image , and the customer gets a copy of that image with the invoice. the result is effi­ciency .American Express cuts down on handling time and Costs. warehouse storage space. personnel and postage (the recon­structed images on the bills Me smaller and Weigh less).

in other applications, efficiency also can mean being able to do something at all rather than just. more cheaply. In Downers Grove, Illinois , a gas station attendant was robbed and killed recently. The police were Image Processing and Health Care At this hospital. The images of the birth certificates are maintained on a computer-based file with medical information .

unable to recognize the assailant's face by viewing the videotape from a surveillance camera. but they saw him take and drop cig­arette packs , and from one pack they got a fingerprint. The Illinois Stare Police entered the fingerprint into an imaging system, called the Automated Fingerprint Identification Sys­tem. Comparing the fingerprint from the cigarette pack With nearly 2 million others stored

by the system, a match was found-and within hours the police had the name of the killer. Searching this quantity of fingerprints the old way by hand, would have been im­possible.

The list of image processing systems is growing: every day. Image processing is used by aircraft builders to store blueprints ,and safety documents required when designing a new plane. Hospitals use it to handle patient

Image Processing and Crime Computers take only a few minutes to check fingerprints from the scene of a crime against a large database of fingerprints – often with great success .

records. Even submarines use it to thread their way among the hazards of the ocean floor

The Hardware

In image processing , an image scanner "digi-tizes'' the text, numbers, fingerprints , signa-tures , or whatever appears on the input pa­per document. a processor compresses or squeezes out any unneeded space in the dig-­itized images to make the most efficient use of expensive secondary storage. Because dig-­itized images take up more storage space than straightforward text and some imaging systems handle millions of images, high-­capacity optical disk is often the preferred storage medium. Unneeded, the input docu­ment can be shredded. To get an image out of the system, the computer decompresses it so that a copy of the original can be viewed on a screen or printed

Computers Large and Small

Major imaging systems such as that used by American Express cost millions of dollars. However, not all imaging systems cost millions. PCs configured with an Image scanner, imaging software, and plenty of RAM and secondary storage can handle imaging. A PC - based imaging system works more slowly. but it costs only about $20,000. In the years to come, the use of imaging may result in the paperless office.